Digital colored images are often produced by electronic still cameras. They include an image sensor which has appropriate color filters. Analog signals are converted into digital signals and digital images are produced which are often called a digital file. There are many storage devices on which these digital images can be stored, including floppy magnetic discs, hard magnetic disc drives, optical discs including write once discs, digital tape, and flash cards. Oftentimes, a user will capture digital images on a digital camera and store them on a storage device. These images may later be downloaded to a host computer and printed using a local printer, such as a color inkjet printer, or sent via the internet to a remote printing service.
In another approach to providing digital colored images, a photographic film is scanned, digitized and converted to a digital file for each image. The Kodak PhotoCD.TM. system is an example of one such arrangement for scanning, digitizing, and providing a digital file for each image. Often, a user will have a service that will scan and digitize images to provide a digital file. These files are provided on memory storage media, such as a Kodak PhotoCD disc. A user may also purchase software programs or applications which will operate on these image files. These applications permit the customer to access, view, modify, and/or print the image files as desired. Adobe Photoshop.TM. is an example of software that can operate on digital image files to drive a printer for producing output images. The application that operate on the images to produce prints, such as Photoshop, are provided separately, rather than on the same PhotoCD disc that stores a customer's film images. As a result, it is difficult for an unskilled user to load the appropriate software into their host computer, launch the application (e.g. Photoshop) and then open the desired images from the PhotoCD, one at a time, in order to select and print images on their home printer.
A problem with many home printing arrangements is that they often require operator adjustment and that they are cumbersome and can take a significant amount of time. One reason for this is that there are a number of different printers and papers that can be used. In order to couple a printer to a stored color digital image, enabling software must be provided. High quality printers typically have a pull down or displayed menu which permits a user to select a particular type of printer transform to produce a print. For example, when Adobe Photoshop software is used to drive an Epson Stylus Photo Ink Jet Printer, the Epson printer has a number of user selectable modes such as Photo, Photoenhance, Graph, Text, and Advanced Photo, but these modes must be selected by the user. These can be used by skilled users to provide improved printing of continuous tone images from digital files made from scanning film negatives, such as from PhotoCD. However, the modes do not provide the best possible prints, since they do not take into account the print paper that is used. Furthermore, since a "Photo" mode is not automatically selected when a PhotoCD image is to be printed, an unskilled user may inadvertently use an undesirable mode, such as "text" or "graph", when printing the continuous tone images, thus producing poor quality prints.